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Listen "Celene Hoag - Scaling a White Label Content Creation Business - The Cold Star Project"
Episode Synopsis
Celene Hoag is the "glue" holding a fast-growing white label content creation business together.
Like any other relatively young business, Anansi Content Solutions faced growing pains moving from being a small agency of a couple of people primarily working “in” the business to a larger team of five and working “on” the business.
Figuring out who to hire next, going through periods of being super swamped and over-capacity, then increasing the team (which incurs other expenses and training time) caused cashflow issues because they suddenly had one more mouth to feed. And the project load didn’t magically increase to accommodate the new person.
They also had a string of virtual assistants (VAs) coming and going due to a series of random occurrences so that took a lot of extra energy to continuously hire and train people.
Doing everything themselves, while simultaneously trying to build the foundation of the business, clearly didn't work effectively. They knew where they were at, and had a clear picture of where they wanted to be, but really struggled with what the path from point A to point B looked like.
Two main things have helped Anansi grow so quickly and smoothly:
1. Having so many detailed processes mapped out for tasks, divided by projects, admin and sales.
Having processes clearly documented also allows new team members to step into their roles much quicker because instead of spending training time showing them how to do basic things, Celene can spend it showing them how to do them really well, and also answering their questions.
Being able to invite partners to the Teamwork app on their projects and have them see the backend is an added bonus, because they see just how detail-oriented and organized Anansi is. This has a big impact on trust.
2. From Brent Weaver from UGurus was the concept of structuring the business around a Single Scalable Seat. This means having a single role which you can measure cashflow and capacity around, and easily scale up or down by adding or removing people.
If you want the clarity and effectiveness of having processes like those described in this interview, book a call at coldstartech.com
Like any other relatively young business, Anansi Content Solutions faced growing pains moving from being a small agency of a couple of people primarily working “in” the business to a larger team of five and working “on” the business.
Figuring out who to hire next, going through periods of being super swamped and over-capacity, then increasing the team (which incurs other expenses and training time) caused cashflow issues because they suddenly had one more mouth to feed. And the project load didn’t magically increase to accommodate the new person.
They also had a string of virtual assistants (VAs) coming and going due to a series of random occurrences so that took a lot of extra energy to continuously hire and train people.
Doing everything themselves, while simultaneously trying to build the foundation of the business, clearly didn't work effectively. They knew where they were at, and had a clear picture of where they wanted to be, but really struggled with what the path from point A to point B looked like.
Two main things have helped Anansi grow so quickly and smoothly:
1. Having so many detailed processes mapped out for tasks, divided by projects, admin and sales.
Having processes clearly documented also allows new team members to step into their roles much quicker because instead of spending training time showing them how to do basic things, Celene can spend it showing them how to do them really well, and also answering their questions.
Being able to invite partners to the Teamwork app on their projects and have them see the backend is an added bonus, because they see just how detail-oriented and organized Anansi is. This has a big impact on trust.
2. From Brent Weaver from UGurus was the concept of structuring the business around a Single Scalable Seat. This means having a single role which you can measure cashflow and capacity around, and easily scale up or down by adding or removing people.
If you want the clarity and effectiveness of having processes like those described in this interview, book a call at coldstartech.com
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